A federal judge threw a lifeline to the Border Patrol and border communities late Friday by blocking the feds from lifting Title 42, which allows the expulsion of tens of thousands of illegal migrants over COVID concerns. But that at best postpones disaster, since President Joe Biden and his entire administration don’t have any better ideas than “let them all in.”

The Department of Homeland Security admitted that ending Title 42 would likely entice even more migrants to try crossing the border, on top of the 200,000-plus a month now flooding in.

Those waves began as soon as Biden took office, promising to reverse his predecessor’s tough polices, and only grew (with some seasonal ebb-and-flow) as he delivered on those vows.

And kept growing despite Biden’s regular empty claims to have the border under control.

So US District Judge Robert Summerhays only kept things from getting suddenly worse, just hours before the rule was set to go. And higher courts may yet reverse him.

With luck, the 24 GOP state attorneys general who filed the suit can keep the rule in place through the end of the year, when a newly Republican Congress (and the sting of the voters’ rejection) can force some sanity on a White House so far totally committed to utter ineptitude on the border.